• Mitoh
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Topic: Discussion: The Battle of Yavin, who needs a trench?

Ok, be warned this may be a long involved post! but i'm in the design field so this bothered me enough to warrent some feedback!, the good kind of feedback!

First and foremost, best map ever. Best battle of yavin i've played out of any of the lucasarts recrations of the event visually and through gameplay, I love it more then the rest of the maps and have tons of fun in it so great job!

The deflection towers is probably the better part, no one focused heavilly enough on having to blow them up and the battle involved in taking them out, granted theres issues which have already been brought up with how long they take to go down and how the newer players who don't know what to do can break the map and cause a loss simply because there is just not enough damage per second on the towers to take them down in time to do a reasonable run in the trench. However that being said as i've seen for myself, once people understand the map and the populations are high the timing is about right, about 75% of the match on towers the last 1/4 with usually around 70-30 ticks left trying the last ditch effort for the exhaust port, which ties well into the movie as it was down to the last few moments... so overall if people know what they are doing it works out "perfectly" so good job on finding that balance.

However for me there is a few issues which helps to ruin the full starwars experience, Some of the smaller ones is I rarely ever see anyone actually man the imperial turbo lasers, theres like no incentive at all seems like, perhaps attaching scanners to manned turrets or something so that turrets could see the radar would draw more people to using them, since the radar is blind right now, and you can only use visual identification(which is tied to how things rolled in the movie)...

The other small one would be that towers that auto fire are still taking slightly too long to lock on to a target, i'd rather they lock on immiediatly but have a wide cone of fire as opposed to almost never locking on at all, for me all i do is skim the surface constantly and they never fire at me period its to easy to never get locked...again might change if more players  would use turrets...


Which then brings me to the beast of the map, the trench....as of right now in 1.25 its not needed...Any ywing and xwing can come at the exhaust port at a 45 degree angle fire torps and pull off without ever entering the trench. The Whole point of the trench was to avoid the considerably larger majority of the turbolasers which don't seem to be a threat at all atm. In fact its worse to try and enter the trench fly down it in a straight line and try and nail a hole flat in the ground then it is to come in from the air...

The other half of the issue is that you can enter the trench at any point, going either direction, which is only a huge issue for the imperial pilots. Most of the time i do an iconic flight down they are coming at me in reverse down the trench, OR ill see an entire squad just sitting above the exhaust port shooting down the trench like 4-6 extra turrets...and though i'm sure i might get a lecture on how han solo shot imperial fighters from outside the trench and yadda yadda, it makes doing the iconic runs almost pointless and non-rewarding.

So the question of which must be asked, since there already is a yellow square pointing to a point in the trench that is good for where one would normally enter, was there or can there be some way to force both imperial and rebel fighters to enter the trench at that point only and only exit that the end of the trench to allow the trench run, the most important part of the map more iconic? Ideally making it harder for the rebel side, thus some tweaking of tic costs might be required, I mean even if you increase the accuracy and power of turbolasers that are invulnerable lining towards the end of the trench, it doesn't solve the problem of imeprial ties flying through that area like vultures without any threat to them...

Anyway I wanted to lay that out for discussion, like perhaps some insivible structure wall that lines the top of the trench or something except for 2 parts or I don't know the 2142 engine all that well, most of my time is spent in other engines so I can't really say on what can be done but thats my only issues so its up for discussion, hit me with ur best shot! smile

2 Reply by Safe-Keeper (edited by Safe-Keeper 2008-05-28 16:59:53)

  • From: Grong, Norway
  • Registered: 2006-07-25
  • Posts: 5,192

Re: Discussion: The Battle of Yavin, who needs a trench?

Hey, and welcome to First Strike. To sum up my answer to your post, I think the trench should stay. You could split the map in two, ie. with one concentrated on dogfighting and destroying towers, and on that details the trench run only, but I don't see a need. As for removing it, I'm against it for the sole reason that it'd cause an outrage among players who feel it to be a vital part of the experience (much more so than the mentioned-in-passing deflection tower).

Ok, be warned this may be a long involved post! but i'm in the design field so this bothered me enough to warrent some feedback!, the good kind of feedback!

You're not the only one here making long posts. By all means keep doing so. I'll keep the "tl;dr" crowd away from you.

I rarely ever see anyone actually man the imperial turbo lasers

This probably is due to quite a few reasons, and probably depends on the person playing. First of all, the placing of the consoles aren't really intuitive (there is a system to their placement, but it's not transparent to first-timers), so it takes a lot of trial-and-error to find the right console. Secondly, many people prefer dogfighting to just sitting in an AA turret - this is a common occurrence in most BF games and mods, from BF1942 to FS. Thirdly, people may simply underestimate the power of the turret, which is sad, as it can really do a whole lot of damage.

There are probably more reasons than that, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I think the best thing to do is wait for players to "discover" them. As for your radar idea, I'd prefer the deflection towers having a radar ability, myself. This is not lore-accurate, but it'd help the turrets as well as deter griefing I'm not getting into detail about.

The other small one would be that towers that auto fire are still taking slightly too long to lock on to a target, i'd rather they lock on immiediatly but have a wide cone of fire as opposed to almost never locking on at all, for me all i do is skim the surface constantly and they never fire at me period its to easy to never get locked...again might change if more players  would use turrets...

Turrets are actually strongly underestimated in the Yavin map. They don't do much damage, causing players to ignore them, but they cause a lot of lost HP over time, and do shoot a lot of fighters down.

I'd prefer a system in which turrets made an actual effort to lock onto and shoot down fighters that entered their range, but the devs probably have a reason for making them rotate and only engage at close range. I suspect it's a balance thing.

Which then brings me to the beast of the map, the trench....as of right now in 1.25 its not needed...Any ywing and xwing can come at the exhaust port at a 45 degree angle fire torps and pull off without ever entering the trench.

When testing the map, our idea was that the large number of turrets around the end of the trench would prevent this kind of, what shall I say, griefing/exploiting/smacktardness. Again, I say we give it time and wait for players to "discover" turrets. If all the turrets at the end of the trench are manned, this maneuver should be a lot harder.

The other half of the issue is that you can enter the trench at any point, going either direction, which is only a huge issue for the imperial pilots. Most of the time i do an iconic flight down they are coming at me in reverse down the trench, OR ill see an entire squad just sitting above the exhaust port shooting down the trench like 4-6 extra turrets...and though i'm sure i might get a lecture on how han solo shot imperial fighters from outside the trench and yadda yadda, it makes doing the iconic runs almost pointless and non-rewarding.

Due to lag issues on my end (ISP-related, not FS-related), I haven't played the map online post-release, so I can't comment. Hope someone else can.

So the question of which must be asked, since there already is a yellow square pointing to a point in the trench that is good for where one would normally enter

I think the square is there simply to mark where the smaller, more shallow west-east "TIE trench" meets the main north-south "Movie trench".

was there or can there be some way to force both imperial and rebel fighters to enter the trench at that point only and only exit that the end of the trench to allow the trench run, the most important part of the map more iconic?

The thing I like about FS (and liked about its "adopted little sister" GC) is that for the most part, with exceptions, it doesn't force movie moments. In GC, you had a Hoth battle with the Falcon, but the devs never forced the scene where the Falcon sits in the hangar bay gunning down stormies - it just happened if people were at the right place at the right time, otherwise it didn't. In FS, likewise, movie moments do happen, but aren't forced.

So it'd be a bad idea to force people to enter the trench at a given point. Far better to implement gameplay mechanisms to make it the most feasible solution. GC lined the trench with turrets and made the area too distant from the trench out of bonds, but I think we can do better for FS.

Ideally making it harder for the rebel side, thus some tweaking of tic costs might be required, I mean even if you increase the accuracy and power of turbolasers that are invulnerable lining towards the end of the trench, it doesn't solve the problem of imeprial ties flying through that area like vultures without any threat to them...

The TL's in the trench are invulnerable? Are you sure of this? You know that turrets take two torps to destroy, right?

Again, welcome to FS and thanks for your feedback! Hopefully a dev will come along and give a better answer than I could.

"One of the bitches actually gave birth while she was attacking, and her puppies joined in on the carnage."
--the awesomeness that is Boatmurdered.

Safe-Keeper's Website

  • Mitoh
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Re: Discussion: The Battle of Yavin, who needs a trench?

Safe-Keeper wrote:

Hey, and welcome to First Strike. To sum up my answer to your post, I think the trench should stay. You could split the map in two, ie. with one concentrated on dogfighting and destroying towers, and on that details the trench run only, but I don't see a need. As for removing it, I'm against it for the sole reason that it'd cause an outrage among players who feel it to be a vital part of the experience (much more so than the mentioned-in-passing deflection tower).

Not my first time here i've been here since launch but the forget password is broken and just making a new forum account was faster =p

I just spent an hour on a near empty server helping some =TAW= test and did both sides to look at some issues closely, so heres some comments/replies:

Yeah as far as the turrets it would be nicer if there was some sort of icon on them that gave some clue to where they were, much like on the titans theres an image of whether they are a top turret or bottom turret, I know that increases the models and textures required and whatnot but would be more helpful...

As far as the auto turrets, it doesn't seem like they fire because theres actually no projectiles rendering, so you don't see them fire unless its manned for some reason, at least on my screen. And they do damage and hit ok but with as close to the ground as I fly i never get touched, I do about 5 feet off the deathstar ground type of low, and use that to my advantage most of the time, its alot easier then people think and even if you didn't do it that low, as long as you don't fly in a straight line u never get hit, do a turn at 30 degrees above a turret, it won't touch you if ur full throttle. It needs to be a bit faster at locking on I would think...but maybe thats subject to testing...again if more people manned turrets there woudn't be this problem.

The other thing I noticed is some turrets auto-repair, others don't, possibly on whether they are AI or mannable, but there doesn't seem to be a way to repair the mannable ones, even though we have the tool. Though it might simply be I just can't find the turret that was destroyed because the layout is so horrid...

As far as the trench I wasn't saying that it should be removed from the map, im just point out theres no point in using it to win the map atm... If people manned the turrets at the end of the trench it might be better, it might also help if there were a few more turrets closer from the trench to prevent sniping the exhaust port too if you happen to know the max range on the torps... but the turrets at the end ARE currently destroyable which is why I commented on making them invulnerable so someone coudn't fly in and torp em just to be able to sit there at the end and do 45 degree runs either...


I agree the playerbase should be more "coaxed" into taking the trench over anything else but its hard when ties can just fly around at will and take you out vs entering the trench, fixes to the turbo lasers at the end, perhaps if theres a way to splt their ai from the turrets that defend the deflection towers so that they are far more accurate at longer ranges or something I'm not sure, but you gotta deal with ties coming from the exhaust side of which you can usually win against 1, maybe 2 but usually not 3 or more especially if they are hovering camping...and the turrets inside the trench defending the exhaust also doesn't really track anything till ur past em, which is also somewhat annoying they should be shooting very slowly down the trench not till ur just past em, like give them the firing rate of a cap ship anti-capitol guns to make things more interesting....

I don't know I don't want to FORCE the players to use the trench from the end on in, but we make these maps and play them to re-live the movie/book experience so why not do what we can to get it closer to that, destroying all the towers is cool and all but when u get down to the trench and its impossible due to all the combination of slight flaws where the only way to win is to 45 degree it at the end its sort of a big let down imo...maybe its just me...

  • From: Grong, Norway
  • Registered: 2006-07-25
  • Posts: 5,192

Re: Discussion: The Battle of Yavin, who needs a trench?

Not my first time here i've been here since launch but the forget password is broken and just making a new forum account was faster =p

Oh. That explains things. Are you using a similar name to your old one, or do you play under this name? 'Cause I thought the name was familiar somehow..

"One of the bitches actually gave birth while she was attacking, and her puppies joined in on the carnage."
--the awesomeness that is Boatmurdered.

Safe-Keeper's Website

  • Mitoh
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Re: Discussion: The Battle of Yavin, who needs a trench?

Safe-Keeper wrote:

Not my first time here i've been here since launch but the forget password is broken and just making a new forum account was faster =p

Oh. That explains things. Are you using a similar name to your old one, or do you play under this name? 'Cause I thought the name was familiar somehow..

I play as *MoD* Mitoh, mod is a guild originating from precu swg a handful plays 2142 once in awhile, but mitoh is me, i originally was on the forum as Tellahane though, granted i'm not a big forum poster here but i coudn't remember my password and forgot password brings script errors =p

  • From: Austria
  • Registered: 2007-09-29
  • Posts: 581

Re: Discussion: The Battle of Yavin, who needs a trench?

About the Auto Firing turrets, the spinning is an Engine Limitation, else they would only be able to fire down a cone and would be moving back and forth from one end of the cone to the other one (like the sentry towers in vanilla)

Believe me, the Exhaust port CANNOT be hit from outside the trench, its protected by an invisible shield so you need to enter the trench, though i wont reveal the big secret on how to hit the spot

the fighting at the end of the trench is usually pretty extreme, i believe if you get a squad of ppl in that trench flying in distances of like 200 meters, then they can take down the tie's that try to line up behind their foreman (is that actually a word??? tongue )

and as SK pointed out, the turbolasers in the trench are definitly destructible

____________
Former GC player known as "Saupadl"
GC-Veteran from 2 to 5.3
Ingame Name: FsTest Saupadl

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  • Mitoh
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Re: Discussion: The Battle of Yavin, who needs a trench?

HagenSaubauch wrote:

Believe me, the Exhaust port CANNOT be hit from outside the trench, its protected by an invisible shield so you need to enter the trench, though i wont reveal the big secret on how to hit the spot

i've succesfully done it twice on live servers in a ywing...